MY LIFE WITH PAMELA ANDERSON AND OTHER W ORK

“I think [celebrity] is both as outrageous and as mundane ... , 2002, aluminum, wool
All Photos: Karen Asher
MARCH 3 - APRIL 8, 2011
KRISTIN NELSON
MY LIFE WITH
PAMELA ANDERSON
AND OTHER WORK
aceartinc.
CRITICAL DISTANCE VOL 16:3
CONSTRUCTION ZONE A RESPONSE BY
Tricia Wasney
“The construction of gender is the product and the process of both
representation and self-representation.”1
G
irls learning traditional needle crafts are expected to work neatly
and cleanly. With embroidery, I was taught to make the back of
the work as neat and beautiful as the front. When knitting, ends
are carefully woven into the work, seams are made as seamless as possible. Orderly construction is key.
In My Life with Pamela Anderson and Other Work, construction is also
key, but it is not necessarily orderly. In the needlework pieces, Kristin
Nelson subverts the tidy rule by exposing the needlework technique.
The large cross-stitch portraits of Pamela are well executed on the front
which is typically the only angle one views this kind of work. But Kristin
installation views, My Life With Pamela Anderson And Other Work
allows us to see the back in all its messy glory as if to emphasize there
is more going on under the surface. This is borne out by the titles of
the works which are long descriptions of social causes that Pamela is
concerned about while the images themselves are based on seductive photographs. In the smaller cross-stitch series of portraits entitled
youmeyoumeyoume we do not see the back, but the ends of the yarn
hang beyond the frame of the piece, again drawing attention both to
the work of the human hand and to a deliberate disordering of conventional thought. The “you” is Pamela and the “me” is Kristin; the
portraits are hung in the order of the title which, written in lower case
and mashed together, suggests an intimate and equitable pairing of
the two women. But Kristin is not a fan obsessed with a star; she is an
artist investigating her relationship to the world through contemporary
cultural practices.
youmeyoumeyoume; plexiglass, wool, bolts
By using homey and imperfect techniques to conjure images of, and a
relationship with, Pamela Anderson—arguably among the most recognizable figures in the world—Kristin plays with how we engage with celebrity
culture. We admire (and condemn) celebrities from afar via images that
are glossy and refined. In an excerpt from a review on Amazon.com, of a
book entitled Superstars of Film: Pamela Anderson Lee, this is honestly (if
disturbingly) illustrated. The review is called “don’t buy it for the pictures:”
The two-dimensional image is not just a representation of the person, it
is the person, bypassing all that unnecessary (and unsexy) back-story. In
A Short History of Celebrity, Fred Inglis discusses our culture’s fascination with celebrity:
“I was very disappointed with this book. It is small, a little larger than a
“This is the powerful contradiction of our phenomenon. It combines
paperback novel. The pictures are poor quality. Poor quality meaning
knowability with distance. Political leader and cinema star are intensely
bad coloration, grainy, and uninteresting (most pictures are press or news
familiar (one of the family) by way of the cinema screen...but physically
type images). I bought the book because I think Pam is beautiful, and I
and in terms of how we all need to feel the directness of experience, they
Spinning With Pamela, Watching With Pamela; yarn, nails
like looking at pictures of her. I think I would of liked this book more if I
was interested in her life story, which seems to be the focus.”2
have the remoteness of the supernatural. This is the compound which
makes for the sacredness of celebrity and may suggest the reason why
people both worship and vilify the famous.”3
Kristin, on the other hand, is interested in Pamela’s life story, she wants
to get to know her, to use Kristin’s own words, to “personalize” her. And
although Kristin also gets to know Pamela through images, the ones she
produces are endearing, affectionate, and smart. The series of digital
collages in the exhibition illustrate the relationship with Pamela she has
constructed via photographs. In these Kristin walks, cycles, sunbathes,
snorkels, snowboards and generally just hangs with her. And rather than
Walking With Pamela, Snowboarding With Pamela; pigment on bamboo paper
outlines with hammered nails. Two different coloured yarns are used—
teal for Kristin, red for Pamela—to connect the points. The images span
a large wall interrupted by a column but the yarn continues from one to
the other with the unused skeins resting on the ground below as if to
suggest the narrative also persists. Both the method and the content
are poignant. In one of the images Pamela holds Kristin in her arms;
in the other she lies near her. Pamela appears motherly, attentive and
protective, a far cry from the elusive-bombshell-rocker-chick persona we
“know”. Inversely, through this pairing Kristin appears to be protecting
Pamela (and maybe all women) from an objectifying gaze.
In her artist talk, however, Kristin discussed Pamela as a figure who is
in control of her self-representation, a drag persona fully aware of her
larger-than-life profile. Kristin showed an image of Pamela from a fashion magazine shoot with the quote: “I am who I am. No apologies, no
excuses. I’m not here for anyone’s approval.” Also in that fashion shoot,
insert herself into Pamela’s posh world she gently pulls her into her own
under a Prairie sky, in a beaver-dammed swimming hole, or on a snowcovered hill. The images are a little sassy but stop short of any sign of
ridicule or disrespect. On the contrary, in her artist’s talk, Kristin noted
that it is important for her to have a “dialogue with the subject she is
working on” and that respect formed a large part of that dialogue.
Other representations of Pamela are rendered in conventional craft materials that are used in unconventional ways. In the most tender of the
portraits, Kristin has directly inserted Pamela into photos of herself as a
child which she has rendered into yarn drawings. In these two separate
but joined pieces, Spinning With Pamela and Watching With Pamela,
Kristin projected images onto the wall of the gallery and traced the
Installation view, Drag King Community Trading cards
which is available to view as a video on the internet Pamela declares
“I just like to perform. If I have any talent, it’s for that.”4 This ties the work in
with the Drag King Trading Cards exhibited in the same space. In this work
photos of drag kings along with their statistics replicate the well-known
form of the sports trading card. Just as she does with the medium of
craft, Kristin once again uses a modest and popular device to explore and
honour the construction of identity and the performance of gender. With
these trading cards, Kristin equates the celebration of non-mainstream
drag culture with the ultra-mainstream worship of sports stars, making a
connection similar to that of her imagined friendship with Pamela.
By employing DIY techniques, Kristin emphasizes the presence of the
body in the making of the work as well as in its content. She explores
complex ideas through deceptively simple means. In By Hand: The Use
of Craft in Contemporary Art, Shu Hung and Joseph Magliaro discuss
the work of artist Kiki Smith. The following quote can also be applied to
Kristin Nelson:
“This belief that humanity has a common goal, yet expresses that goal
in a multiplicity of ways, helped define the theoretical backbone of the
new approach to handmade art. Smith’s methods deliberately lay bare
the processes of fabrication as gestures of sincerity. They maintain that
the physical body is the primary means with which to experience the
world and the most obvious tool for the production of creative work.”5
The absence of the body, on the other hand, is evident in Kristin’s prints
of parking garages and bare surface lots which are installed in ace’s Flux
gallery, next to the main exhibition space. In these works, Kristin reverses the approach to materials that she used in the Pamela Anderson
works. Etchings, typically employed to commemorate things of pride in
a city, are here used to represent a somewhat shameful urban condition
Parking/No Parking: pigment on Epson smooth paper, Various Winnipeg Parking Lots, etchings on paper
Meditations on construction—of self, gender, craft, the built environment—are common threads that run throughout Kristin’s work. She
draws attention to the making of the object and pulls it slightly out of
context by using materials in surprising ways. She democratizes the
subjects she explores, elevating the mundane and making the extraordinary approachable, while intelligently and respectfully arguing for this
equalization.
Installed at the entrance to the exhibition space are print-outs of the email correspondence that documents Kristin’s unsuccessful attempt to
contact Pamela Anderson directly so as to invite her to the exhibition. I
think it is fitting that the meeting never took place; I rather fancy Kristin’s
life with Pamela Anderson just the way she imagined it.
so obviously centred on the car. But one senses even a lack of condemnation in this work; the images are delicate and exquisitely drawn, iconic
even. There is a beauty in the realistic recognition of the human activity
in our city that the prints represent:
“No group sets out to create a landscape, of course. What it sets out to
do is to create a community, and the landscape as its visible manifestation
is simply the by-product of people working and living, sometimes coming
together, sometimes staying apart, but always recognizing their interdependence...it follows that no landscape can be exclusively devoted to
the fostering of only one identity. Our imaginative literature abounds in
descriptions of utopias where everyone is civic-minded, and there are
many descriptions of the delights of living in harmony with nature as
certain pretechnological societies presumably did. But we sense that
these visions are not true to human nature as we know it, and that these
landscapes can never be realized.”6
installation view Hey Manitoba!; wool, foam, blog
Notes
1 Teresa de Lauretis, Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction
(Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987), p. 9.
2 Review by Christopher Ohlgren “chris”, Portland, Oregon
http://www.amazon.com/Pamela-Anderson-Lee-Superstars-Film/dp/0791046478.
March 19, 2011.
3 Fred Inglis, A Short History of Celebrity (New Jersey: Princeton University Press,
2010), pp. 11 and 12.
4 http://www.elleuk.com/elletv/%28channel%29/inside-elle/%28playlist%29/ELLEMagazine/%28video%29/behind-the-shoot-pamela-anderson. April 1, 2011
5 Shu Hung and Joseph Magliaro, Eds. By Hand: The Use of Craft in Contemporary
Art (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007), p. 12.
6 J.B. Jackson, Discovering the Vernacular Landscape (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1984), p. 13.
aceartinc.
2nd floor, 290 McDermot Ave. Winnipeg MB R3B 0T2
p: 204.944.9763 e: gallery@aceart.org
Tuesday-Saturday 12 - 5pm
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Critical Distance is a writing program of aceartinc.
that encourages critical writing and dialogue about
contemporary art. The program is an avenue for
exploration by emerging and established artists
and writers. Written for each exhibition mounted at
aceartinc. these texts form the basis of our annual
journal Paper Wait.
aceartinc. is an Artist-Run Centre dedicated
to the development, exhibition and dissemination of contemporary art by cultural producers.
aceartinc. maintains a commitment to emerging artists and recognizes its role in placing
contemporary artists in a larger cultural context. aceartinc. is dedicated to cultural diversity in its programs and to this end encourages applications from contemporary artists
and curators identifying as members of GLBT
(gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender), Aboriginal
(status, non-status, Inuit, Métis) and all other
cultural communities.
aceartinc. gratefully acknowledges the generous
support of associate members and donors, our
volunteers, the Manitoba Arts Council, The Canada Council for the Arts, Media Arts and Visual Arts
Sections, The City of Winnipeg Arts Council,
WH and SE Loewen Foundation, the Winnipeg
Foundation, The Family of Wendy Wersch, and the
Sign Source.
Tricia Wasney has a background in film, landscape
architecture and visual art, and has published
work in each. She developed, and currently manages, Winnipeg’s public art policy and program
through the Winnipeg Arts Council.